Google introduced factory reset protection (FRP) in Android 5.1 to make it impossible to use a stolen device. Ever since then, RootJunky has been finding workarounds for it. Presumably this is all he does, tapping around in the setup menu for hours or days on end until he finds a trick. Google just rolled out the May security patch for Nexus devices, and RootJunky has found a FRP bypass method for it. It's not easy, but it works.

Sound sounds better when it's coming from more directions. Okay, that may not be entirely how audio works, but I never claimed to be an expert in the area. I can say this. When an explosion happens to your left on screen and you hear it come that direction, it's very cool. That's an objective statement of fact.

Since this is the case, Google has added Dolby Digital Plus surround sound support to Android TV and Roku.

Need a Nexus device on the cheap? Well, then you clicked on the right article. Daily Steals has refurbished 32GB Nexus 5's on sale in black for $140 and white for $160. Yeah, the phone did come out in 2013, and yeah the battery life is not great, but hey, it's still running the latest Android software and $140 is less than a fourth of what you'll pay for a Nexus 6P.

The model being sold by Daily Steals is the US D820 variant, meaning it's compatible with T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint. Standard shipping is free and will get you your (refurbished) device in 3-7 business days.

Netflix recently noted that it has been throttling data on carriers like AT&T that have overage charges, but that was just a temporary measure. The company had planned to roll its mobile data saver feature out to everyone in May, and here we are. The feature should be live for everyone right now, no update needed.

It feels like Facebook is on a roll at the moment: Messenger has been getting lots of updates recently, as has WhatsApp, and there's new Instagram UI too. Now it's the turn of the main Facebook app. It would be an understatement to say it needs a lot of development time. If I had a dollar for every time I've seen a complaint about the Facebook app, I'd be richer than Mark Zuckerberg.

New Sharing Popup

The first item is the new sharing popup. We're not entirely sure when this first appeared, but it's there. The popup allows users to change where they're posting to - 'Post to Facebook,' 'On a friend's timeline,' and 'In a group.' This can be switched using the top spinner.

The idea of contactless payments has turned out to be an unusually divisive topic. Some people are certain that we're only a couple of years away from abandoning physical credit cards in favor of using smartphones at the checkout line, while others see it as an obnoxious novelty that slows down everything and should be ignored. Whatever the case, it's interesting to watch the progress of mobile payment methods as they grow and evolve in an effort to capture consumer interest. The latest update to Android Pay v1.3 doesn't appear to bring any immediately available new features, but a teardown reveals that we will soon have the option to use certain types of cards without unlocking our phones.

Even though it was announced almost a year and a half after the original LG G Pad 8.3, the G Pad X8.3 (notice the X?) is only a small improvement over its predecessor. The size, screen, software, storage, battery, remained more or less the same. Only the processor was bumped from a Snapdragon 600 to a 615 and the camera from a 5MP to an 8MP shooter.

Still, if you bought the X8.3 on Verizon, you might have been bummed because your relatively new tablet was stuck on Lollipop even though all the cool flagship phones got Marshmallow. Well, no more.

On the scale of meh to super duper exciting, this Google+ 7.8 version update falls low, really low. Unless you get excited about bug fixes, which I know is a legit reason to love an update if a specific bug had been ruining the app for you, but is as dry and drab a topic to read about as a 0.1 pH change in a cleaning solution, you can pretty much say that nothing significant has changed.

I know I'm telling you to close this tab and go read something else, but since you're still here and you're clearly interested in the littlest changes Google introduces in its apps, I'll satisfy your curiosity.

About a week ago, a couple of readers reported to us that direct carrier billing was showing up for Idea Cellular subscribers in India, but it seemed at the time that the feature wasn't live for everyone and wasn't working reliably for those who had it. Now it's official: the Google Asia Pacific Blog has announced the availability of carrier billing on Idea Cellular.

The post explains how direct carrier billing has positively impacted purchases on Google Play, citing Indonesia as an example of 4x growth in the number of people who make app and in-app purchases after the introduction of operator billing.

We've spent months with barely any example use of Google's Nearby API by third-party apps, but in only a couple of days several apps have popped up with this proximity sharing method. First it was Radon for sending regular links, then Card Case for contact details, and now it's app links' turn with an app called, predictably, App Links.

The app was just updated to version 2.0 and it no longer only supports sending links of your preinstalled apps with Android's Share intent. There's a new Nearby icon in the app's title bar (which looks like two overlapping playback buttons) that simply broadcasts the apps you have selected to devices that are close to you, and looks for apps being shared back by them.